| -Graduation Ceremony at the Urban Assembly School of Business for Young Women-- |
[24 Jun 2012|11:18pm] |
Some of you might know me, and some of you might not. That's fine. Though it probably means I ought to talk with the Avengers PR department. My name is Toni Rhodes, though you might know me better as Spark. I'm an Avenger. And it's my pleasure to be talking to you all here, on your graduation day. I'm not much older than most you, only halfway through college myself. But people thought I might have something worth saying to you. I wasn't so sure I did, but a good friend of mine did this thing she does where she won't stop pushing a person if she thinks they're trying to quit or give up or... Well, she convinced me that maybe I could say something.
I'm black, obviously, and I'm a woman. My parents, successful people, both of them, made sure to tell me from as soon as I could understand that I was never to use either of those things as an excuse for not succeeding. But they were just as clear about the fact that both of those things meant I would have to work twice as hard just to achieve half as much as a white male. I took this to heart. Gave everything I could everything I had.
And then, when I was thirteen, I nearly crippled my best friend when my powers first manifested. On top of everything else, I was a mutant, with the power to manipulate ambient electricity and electromagnetic fields. There's a better scientific explanation, but the real upshot of it is my electronics never ran out of charge.
It's also allowed me to help a lot of people, to do things and go places I never thought possible. I'm not gonna say I've always used my powers as responsibly as I should... but hey, a girl does have to enjoy herself sometimes.
Ostensibly, I kept a secret identity, at least, for the early part of my career as an Avenger. And maybe goggles weren't exactly the world's best mask. But hey, it worked well enough. Heard of some guy who gets by with just a pair of glasses in his secret identity. Well enough until I threw that away. Real bad guy came after a friend of mine. Didn't have the chance to do anything but act. And so I did. In front of a whole lot of camera phones and people. Blew that secret right out of the water. In under an hour, the blogs and websites and all that stuff were already tweeting about me being a mutant.
And by the next morning, the hate mail started. I still get the most mail of any of the Avengers because most of it's hate mail. I'd dealt with racist idiots before, because of the color of my skin. I thought I could deal with that too.
And for the most part, I can. I don't even bother reading most of it any more, except when I'm ready to lose my faith in humanity. And I have friends who love me dearly, for who I am, not what I am.
I'm a woman.
I'm black.
I'm a mutant.
By all rights, in today's world, sadly enough, that'd probably count as three strikes. I'm out. No chances, no nothing.
But it isn't. I'm still here, still fighting, and still doing pretty damn well for myself. I'm saving the world, going to college, and providing the voice of reason to a girl with plenty of brains but not even half as much as sense.
I could let all these things weigh me down. I could let what other people see, what other people define me as, other people making me a thing or a stereotype or a statistic, I could let all of that define me, influence me. But I don't. I chose to fight. To rise up. To succeed.
And you can too.
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